50 songs to take to my grave #47: Pictures Of You

The Cure is a band I have a lot of time for, although I wouldn't class myself as a fan, not in the proper sense. Proper Cure fans are obsessives. Like, bordering on weird. Some of them actually wear their makeup and hair like Robert Smith, even on a Sunday! Anyway, most of what the band put out between 1978 and 1992 was pretty much faultless. Since then, they've only put out four albums which all contained some decent material, but they've struggled to match anything close to their peak.

That peak came in 1989 with 'Disintegration', a masterpiece of goth-pop. It wasn't an album I took to immediately. On the contrary, I didn't own it until several years after its release, and until then had only heard it a few times. I think I was discovering so much new music at the time, the Cure just didn't hit my radar in the way they perhaps ought to have. I did, however, own a few vinyl LPs that I picked up second-hand - 'The Head On The Door', 'Three Imaginary Boys' and the singles comp 'Standing On A Beach'.

Pictures Of You always stood out to me when I first heard 'Disintegration'. For me though, the reason it's included in this series is purely a personal one. MrsRobster once compiled a CD for me in response to one I did for her. She included the album version of Pictures Of You and for reasons I still can't explain it made perfect sense. This was years ago, when the sproglets were still very young, but ever since then I've attached a special meaning to this track; I kind of think of it as one of our songs. The fact it's a blinder helps, but at the end of the day, sentiment wins out and Pictures Of You makes the final list while some other equally great tunes didn't. It was also our Wedding Anniversary on Wednesday, so the timing is somewhat apt to roll this one out.